How to Make Dirt Play Dough

This dirt play dough recipe is perfect for construction themed sensory play! My preschoolers have been loving it. Make some simple laminated play dough mats with roads and kids will have a blast bulldozing the roads and pretending to build!

Give your play dough real grit by adding clean play sand. I didn’t want to put in actual dirt because I didn’t want to take the chance of growing bacteria in our play dough, but the sand worked well.

Clean play sand – relatively clean is fine. We didn’t wash ours or anything! But it was straight from a package of play sand.

*Note: The amount of play dough pictured in the play photos is a double recipe. The amount shown in the photo below is one batch.

Stir the flour, salt, and cream of tartar. Mix in the water and oil. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring often until it forms a ball. I use a nonstick skillet.

Let the play dough cool on the counter before coloring.

I kneaded in plenty of brown food coloring first, and then kneaded in some sand. You can add a LOT of sand to the play dough without it becoming dry and crumbly! I kneaded in about 1/4 cup at a time until I was happy with the consistency.

The play dough road mats are so simple to make! I stuck strips of car road tape to pieces of card stock and then laminated them.

Then it was time to play! I set out some small river rocks and Jonathan’s construction trucks as well.

Pushing the rocks into the play dough is a good fine motor activity.

Janie and Jonathan spent forever with this! They enjoyed putting rocks in the trucks and using the trucks to push the play dough and make tracks in it. Perfect indoor activity for a cold winter day!

Comments

thank you so much for this. Being a student and a volunteer teacher in a 3rd world country sometimes means that educational toys, etc are not as readily found and cheap as abroad. your recipe helped me create the play dough. i made it in orange colour, and cant wait to buy more food colours to have a whole range.
thanks once again 🙂

[…] for indoor play ideas and found ‘How to Make Dirt Play Dough’ on Sarah’s blog Frugal Fun For Boys and Girls Thanks for that Sarah! So I have given it my own twist. I got on my laptop while Cap had a […]